[preview] Aalbus : a musl/clang/libc++ distro

[preview] Aalbus : a musl/clang/libc++ distro

[Jens Staal]

Dear all,

I recently got a direct e-mail asking about the progress of this hobby
OS and shared a preview archive:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Vg1nJQulRWoOaqLKPY0fewDIwRHPCgWa

It might be nice to get some extra eyeballs on it. The archive is
surprisingly big compared to my previous musl/clang/libc++ gentoo
stage 4. Perhaps due to pkgsrc (which also has a tendency to pull in
lots of dependencies for each package)..

Brief background:

Name/mascot: The name/mascot comes from the Lovecraftian giant albino
penguin Aptenodytes albus:
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Albino_penguin

Toolchain : musl/clang/libc++ + elftoolchain
Package manager: pkgsrc
shell: mksh
editor: vis (-->vi)
Several alternative libraries (libedit, gettext-tiny, netbsd-curses,
skarnet,...)
utilities: a mix of sbase/ubase, Heirloom and (Net)BSD (+freegrep)
man: mandoc+neatroff

I had hoped to use nbase as major provider of general utilities but
when I managed to build it most binaries crashed with a core dump so I
went back to sbase.

Some major TODOs still are to build/package syslinux and linux kernel
and figure out how to make a bootable live ISO.

Re: [preview] Aalbus : a musl/clang/libc++ distro

[Dmitry Golovin]

17.11.2019, 11:32, "Jens Staal" <staal1978@gmail.com>:
> Dear all,
>
> I recently got a direct e-mail asking about the progress of this hobby
> OS and shared a preview archive:
>
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Vg1nJQulRWoOaqLKPY0fewDIwRHPCgWa
>
> It might be nice to get some extra eyeballs on it. The archive is
> surprisingly big compared to my previous musl/clang/libc++ gentoo
> stage 4. Perhaps due to pkgsrc (which also has a tendency to pull in
> lots of dependencies for each package)..
>
> Brief background:
>
> Name/mascot: The name/mascot comes from the Lovecraftian giant albino
> penguin Aptenodytes albus:
> https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Albino_penguin
>
> Toolchain : musl/clang/libc++ + elftoolchain
> Package manager: pkgsrc
> shell: mksh
> editor: vis (-->vi)
> Several alternative libraries (libedit, gettext-tiny, netbsd-curses,
> skarnet,...)
> utilities: a mix of sbase/ubase, Heirloom and (Net)BSD (+freegrep)
> man: mandoc+neatroff
>
> I had hoped to use nbase as major provider of general utilities but
> when I managed to build it most binaries crashed with a core dump so I
> went back to sbase.
>
> Some major TODOs still are to build/package syslinux and linux kernel
> and figure out how to make a bootable live ISO.

Wow! Impressive work. I have my own attempt on
such distro, but it's a lot smaller right now, so
less impressive. I've been working on it since
2014, but hasn't been active.

The name is nenuzhnix, the main idea is not using
anything from the GNU Project when building it.
Here is the project's GitHub link:
https://github.com/tpimh/nenuzhnix

The full list of packages: base-files, curl, dash,
dropbear, e2fsprogs, eudev, kbd, kernel-headers,
kmod, libarchive, libedit, libgit2, libressl,
libssh2, libusb, lynx, miniz, musl, netbsd-curses,
opkg, pciutils, shadow, simplegit, toybox,
usbutils, xz.

As you can see, it's not much, but it's very easy
to add new packages and I will be happy to accept
pull requests adding new packages or improving
existing ones.

I use my own toolchain called ngtc to build all
the packages. Here is the project's GitHub link:
https://github.com/tpimh/ngtc

It consists of clang, compiler-rt, libc++,
libc++abi, libunwind, lld, llvm. Right now Alpine
Linux is used as the host system to build all the
packages, but at some point nenuzhnix should
become self-hosting and be able to build itself.

Also you can easily try it with docker by running
the following:
  docker run -ti --rm tpimh/nenuzhnix /bin/esh -l

Regards,
Dmitry

Re: [preview] Aalbus : a musl/clang/libc++ distro

[Jens Staal]

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>
> The name is nenuzhnix, the main idea is not using
> anything from the GNU Project when building it.
> Here is the project's GitHub link:
> https://github.com/tpimh/nenuzhnix
>
> The full list of packages: base-files, curl, dash,
> dropbear, e2fsprogs, eudev, kbd, kernel-headers,
> kmod, libarchive, libedit, libgit2, libressl,
> libssh2, libusb, lynx, miniz, musl, netbsd-curses,
> opkg, pciutils, shadow, simplegit, toybox,
> usbutils, xz.


I have seen it. I like the idea of trying to replace gmake with ninja. Does
it work with samurai?

For toybox, the build system unfortunately depends on bash...

My initial version before re-packaging Aalbus with pkgsrc was also
"GNU-free" but I decided that I wanted the os to be defined by what it is
rather than what it is not.
The GNU content is still small (the m4/autoconf chain, wget, gmake).

It is still more "BSD/Linux" than GNU/Linux



>

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Re: [preview] Aalbus : a musl/clang/libc++ distro

[Dmitry Golovin]

17.11.2019, 12:27, "Jens Staal" <staal1978@gmail.com>:
>> The name is nenuzhnix, the main idea is not using
>> anything from the GNU Project when building it.
>> Here is the project's GitHub link:
>> https://github.com/tpimh/nenuzhnix
>>
>> The full list of packages: base-files, curl, dash,
>> dropbear, e2fsprogs, eudev, kbd, kernel-headers,
>> kmod, libarchive, libedit, libgit2, libressl,
>> libssh2, libusb, lynx, miniz, musl, netbsd-curses,
>> opkg, pciutils, shadow, simplegit, toybox,
>> usbutils, xz.
>
> I have seen it. I like the idea of trying to replace gmake with ninja. Does it work with samurai?
>
> For toybox, the build system unfortunately depends on bash...
>
> My initial version before re-packaging Aalbus with pkgsrc was also "GNU-free" but I decided that I wanted the os to be defined by what it is rather than what it is not.
> The GNU content is still small (the m4/autoconf chain, wget, gmake).
>
> It is still more "BSD/Linux" than GNU/Linux

Should work with samurai as it's almost a drop-in
replacement for ninja. Not using it now as Alpine
doesn't have it in their repo. For self-hosted
version of nenuzhnix I plan to replace ninja with
samurai and make with Google kati.